When mocking a real creature, I think that making it somehow "adorable" is one crucial aspect. With 20 programmable gestures, Otto can do this and yet stays on a very versatile level. The main objectibe behind Otto is giving our smallest makers an easy way to start their making carrer in a playful and relatable way, without starting right with arduino-level components. I think it makes sense, to keep the treshold of entry low, so the children don't lose interest right in the beginning.
I have always been versed towards innovative Ed-tech solutions
Miro is a friendly, intelligent and highly interactive robot dog designed for use in schools and universities
Whether the robot looks more like a dog or a bunny is doubtful - but it serves a clear purpose: It embodies a creature, humans can easily empathize with.
And there are two ways of doing that with Miro : Children can learn with ease, how to program it, so it creates a useful habit, rewarded with playful interaction. At the same time, it has many sensors and endless possibilities of combining actions. For example a small child could program the creature for his grandmother in the elderly care with meaningful content (e.g. the original barking sound of the ever loved old dog) I really like the versatility level here of having more than just one use case for the robot.
Behavioural change & support is especially interesting in the younger ages, where our brains are still "flexible". The politechnical institute of Milan conducted a research focussing on children with neurodevelopmental disorders, that usually affect emotion, learning ability, self-control, and memory. Core of the research consisted of the interaction with between Teo (the robot) and the children.
“[...] all therapists involved in our study agree that free play with Teo has elicited operational behaviors, social interaction, and emotional responses that normally do not occur using other methods, or that require a much longer time to be achieved“
Reading such studies gave my overall opinion on playful robots an entirely different spin, as there apparently is clear evidence that emotional creatures can really cause behavioral change and carry a purposeful, positive impact for the general purpose.
Playful interaction with Teo, a Mobile Robot for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders
There are plenty of approaches on building artificial creatures for a variety of target audiences.
But in what way could I myself (or like-minded people) profit from such a creature?
During home-isolation I was facing one problem over and over again: